the never-were-a-people-people

neither Ifo nor Ibo

not Ameri-cans but Ameri-cants

a people from their covenants

the Middle Passage having ripped that out

we are a no-people of the Negroid rout

shades of valor many dislike

an outside-people hating ourselves

unto thefts and deaths that cut  us out

danger-zones to others and to self

pushers and dealers we often succeed

for the Man uptown, the ones out-there

who knows how to live, making us the show

our heritage is the be Ameri-cants

hooked  on dough, on dust, on mush

cloning Thurman our peculiar pride

no matter how much we incorporate

no matter how bright our flesh is right

no matter how proper our diction or fare

we're a no-people, a visual nightmare

remnants of a time that offered few grants

frightening colors disturbing the shamed

*When we reach love, we have reached God; our road is ended and we have crossed to the island which is beyond the world.

  -St. Isaac the Syrian

*Reflections of Alan Jones:

  -The development of the gift of negative capability is difficult and painful.  Yet without the nourishment provided by the ability to rest on uncertainties, mysteries, and doubts, the soul begins to starve.  "It cannot live on fun alone.  If the soul gets no food, it will first tear apart other creatures...

then itself."

  -...love is more like Anne Sexton's game of poker into which has been slipped the wild card of the unconditional.  Love, for most of us, is often a scarcely veiled reciprocal trade treaty.  Love is the name we sometimes give to a kind of spiritual cannibalism where two people devour each other.  It can be another name for a parasitic or smothering relationship.  When the real thing is unavailable, we look for terrible substitutes.

  -I do not "happen" without assistance.

  -Here is the basic paradox of soul making: in order for me to be myself, I need to be able to be alone; in order to be myself, I need to be with others.

  -There are those who think they love God because they don't love anyone else.